By Jove, I always took three three’s for nine.
O Lord, sir! it is a pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir.
O Lord, sir! the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show where until it doth amount; for mine own part I am, as they say, but to perfect one man in one poor man, Pompey the Great, sir.
It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompey the Great; for mine own part, I know not the degree of Worthy, but I am to stand for him. V, 2, 501.
Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority; his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake. And I will have an apology for that purpose.
An excellent device, so that if any of the audience hiss, you may cry “Well done, Hercules; now thou crushest the snake!”
Here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. V, II, 462.
The figurative meaning of the word dash is to destroy, frustrate, spoil; in this instance it would rather signify throwing cold water upon it. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was the usual word for the rejection of a Bill in Parliament.
As the cry of yea or no is bigger, so the Bill is allowed or dashed. Sir T. Smith, _Commonwealth of England_, 1633.
The word is now obsolete except in the phrase: To dash one’s hopes or spirits.
Some carry tale, some please man, some slight Zany. To make my lady laugh. VII, 463.
I come with this apology. Keep some state in thy exit and vanish.
It is an epilogue or discourse to make plain some obscure precedence. III, I, 76.
Revels, dances, masks and merry hours Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers. IV, 3, 379.
The latter quotation is interesting on account of its having been quoted in an extremely valuable anthology in the last year of the sixteenth century. This publication being of such extreme interest I shall transcribe the title page in full.
The choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets with their Poetical comparisons, Descriptions of Beauties, Personages, Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groves, Seas, Springs, Rivers, &c.
Whereunto are annexed other various discourses, both pleasant and profitable.
Imprinted for N. L. C. B. and T. H. 1600.
The initials N. L. stand for Nicholas Ling, one of the publishers of the famous piratical “Hamlet” quarto, 1603, also the corrected editions of 1604 and 1605.